“I am a bundle of neurons encased in a bony shell. I have direct control over a physical body that includes fingers. Influenced by my perceptions of the world, I generate ideas, some of which I translate to language and direct my fingers to type into this blog.”
That has been my only description here in the obligatory About Me section of my blog since I started blogging. It reflects my desire to be semi-anonymous on line, as well as my nature as a smart-ass reacting to the imposition of an About Me section in this blog template not of my making.
I have now decided to give readers a few more tidbits of vitally unimportant information about me:
I floundered around professionally as a videographer and off & on political activist, and in recent years became a teacher. This year, I’m teaching 7th and 8th graders in a rural New England school. I am driven by a goal of institutionalizing nonviolence in education. I love chocolate but I have developed unpleasant physical reactions to it. I ignore those reactions & continue to eat it. I used to play in rock’n'roll rock bands and fantasize about starting a middle aged punk band. I love the Ramones. I can bake really good cookies. I manage not to be completely debilitated by my obsessive compulsive disorder. I love living, but would choose to die before I would kill anyone. I waste time on my computer that I could be using to improve myself and the world. In the end, on balance, I would like to think that I’ve done more good than harm in the world.
This is my 2007 thesis for Lesley University's Masters of Education in Curriculum Design, focusing in Conflict Resolution and Peaceable Schools:
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i love random thoughts. they make you think
What a delight!
niceee…
You’ve made me smile
Precious items for those linguistically-minded!
I have a new post, that I hope will make you smile more, Natasha:
http://daisybrain.wordpress.com/2009/11/15/better-definitions-for-words/
And which kind of neurons are you, after all?
Pyramidal, Purkinje cells? Or yet nodes in a neural network? And what does physical body mean? As is flesh-like (e.g., human) or steel-like (i.e., robot)? But more so, who programmed you? 
Those are some good questions, Marie. It didn’t occur to me that anyone would question my status beyond the description I wrote. Pukinje cells were named after their discoverer, so I think I have the right to name my cells. I think that my neurons are all Eric cells, or “Ericells,” not to be confused with “Duricells.”
I believe that my body is flesh-like, although I am relying on perceptions that come through my body to tell me that. I don’t really know how well I can trust my body to accurately convey information about itself.
I suspect that my dog programmed me – he’s always watching me to see if I’m functioning as he thinks I should.
So it seems that by questioning the nature of your cells, we have unravelled the existence of a homunculus dog… (Why not a cat, by the way?) That is intriguing in and of itself.
A further important question – if one is to delve into the Whorfian hypothesis – would be the boring and seemingly uninteresting question what is your mother tongue. Do you – or your master dog – perhaps have one?
And, at long last, how to be sure that you are not, in fact, an autonomous eliza-like system?
The surest way to know if I am an Eliza-like autonamatron is to see if I respond to each of your points without actually saying anything.
I will ask my dog why he is not a cat.
I will ask my mother about her tongue.
Did you ever got an answer from your dog?
Or from your mother, for that matter?
Thank you for asking Maria. I haven’t quite cracked the code to understanding my dog. He pants at me a lot. I think he is trying to convince me that I am a remote part of his body, the way a cell phone could be thought of as a detached body accessory – useful, but the main body can survive without it.
He is now pushing my arm off the keyboard with his snout. He does that when he wants to be taken for a walk, given a treat, or lecture me in dog panting about phenomenology.
hi
Hi.
you have a good attitude to blogging
Where do you think life (the descendants of humanity) will be in one million years? Will they still rely on planets for gravity, or live in huge non-planitoid structures? Living structures seem to get more isolated form the environment as they get more complex (think dipoles vs turtles)- in one million years will life be completely isolated? Will it be able to survive in a vacuum?
15july 1987,
15 july 1987
Don’t be sad, Eric ! Be proud !
Tip of the ol’ English prof’s chapeau to a highly refined sense of linguistic humour. Carry on, please !
Yay!
Too bad ’bout the chocolate reactions! Not yay!
Hi Eric,
Thanks so much for the article. It’s been posted, exactly as you wrote it, and can be viewed at http://coyoteprime-runningcauseicantfly.blogspot.com/2010/06/guest-post-eric-indiana-iranian-nukes-i.html
Please critique it, any criticisms or suggestions are most welcome. Thanks again for your input, it’s always welcome!
Gerry
Thank you Gerry – it looks good there.
My blog is one month old today. If you have the time please come for a visit and tell me what you think.My latest post is about Doreen Van Assen’s Life experiences in nursing school, the point being to do your best no matter what and most likely you will succeed or at the very least happy that you at least went for it. Also about memories if you look back and see sad memories start making happy ones cuz the brain will remember the long term memories the older you get. So like me I try my best to remember every happy time during my sad childhood and when recollecting the sadness image a happy outcome from that experience. This exercise over powers depression and keeps me sane in an insane world. The older I get the happier I get lol.
http://networkedblogs.com/blog/doreen_van_assens_blog/?ahash=ca8f2983cf01b5863a8c01ff0955d6c1 I would love to write a book about this to help others some day.
i love this blog especially the how to take over your school page. in australia the nat test has changed from actap to naplan which is odd
Love your meandering wit. Drop by my blog and see the post on The Ballerina, the Gymnast, and the Yoga Master for a kindred chocoholic spirit!
Your blog is set to “private.”
Oops, sorry. That was a bit of a gotcha! Even though I’d set my primary site to my new blog, my “website” setting was still pointing at my old one. Try it now. If it fails, let me know and I’ll get some help fixing it. In the meantime, http://www.rjsilver.com points to the right blog. Keep up the good posts!
hello sapna……………
good morning
what is that
an adjective, an adverb and a pronoun… sometimes used as a conjunction
I took the blog off private.:)
I just would like you to read my blog because your blog was the very first blog I had ever read and my inspiration of me starting a blog. Now my son even has a blog.
Nice, ES was here
my son has a new blog and would like some visitors. http://ideaswelcome.squarespace.com/
It is titled: Ideas Welcome
subtitle: Where Genuis meets talent
Great idea for a blog. It’ll be a good outlet for him. He’s a creative thinker.
Latest post about how to solve the health care crisis.
I always say if you can’t open a childproof medicine bottle, hand it to a two year old they can always get it open lol
The movie I was talking about with the futuristic school this could be one of the problems solved in the end of the movie.
http://daisybrain.wordpress.com/2010/03/15/women-cant-do-that/
I published Giving/Naming on Broowaha. The owner gave me five stars. What is next?
I don’t know anything about Broowaha – it’s some sort of user-run newspaper?
Daisy brain, I have always gotten my blog ideas from you like your blog is the first blog I ever read in my life. Then I read every post you ever wrote on this blog. Then commented on some of them. Then thought I think my brain thinks so much I need to make a blog. Then if you notice my blog layout is basically stemming from yours. Including the picture I have colorful daisies though and yours at the time were solid white. Yours is a plain white wall, mine is a crumbling about to tear down wall.
Anyways I have a question please tell me what a ping is and how and why do you ping??????????????
Thank you Doreen. I love your writing. As far as I know, a “ping” is when you put a link somewhere to your blog, like if you put a link in one post to another post, WordPress will bring it up as a “ping” that you can approve or disapprove. At first I used to approve all pings but then it seemed like they were coming from random advertising sites and if I approved them then they would appear in my comments for the sole purpose of linking back to the site that sent them.
I guess “pinging” is a way to post a reciprocal link when somebody links to your site.
Hi Daisy brain,
I stumbled the re write of your post from my blog yesterday. Today it has 149 stumbles. Its the here is something strange one. Well I had never ask your permissions when I posted it due to I was ignorant of bloging at the time but wanted to include on my blog what very specific post and comments triggered me to start my very own blog. So I am asking you now is this ok?
You always have permission to repost anything you like Doreen. Thanks for the honor.
- Eric
I just stumbled yours also.